


I wouldn't dare (to fix the twist in you)

by pprfaith



Series: Wishlist 2015 [16]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Community: wishlist_fic, F/M, Immortal Buffy, Intergalactic Roaming, Misunderstood Relationship, Mostly it's an excuse for Buffy and Loki to be badass cuties, Not Beta Read, Odd relationship, Post-Canon, Prompt Fic, Relationship Advice, Yes again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 04:37:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5483726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pprfaith/pseuds/pprfaith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which no-one really gets Buffy and Loki, except for Buffy and Loki.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I wouldn't dare (to fix the twist in you)

**Author's Note:**

> For _dancingxfire_ , who asked for Buffy/Loki, "No matter how far they wander, or how long they've been gone, htey come home to each other." 
> 
> The cute overload may kill you.

+

Buffy is woken by a combination of the early morning sun bleeding through the drapes and her phone ringing. She blinks against one and decides to ignore the other. 

They’ll call back if it’s important and she spent the last week on a jaunt through the far branches of the galaxy with the Guardians. She’s beat. They dropped her off back in Vanaheim less than ten hours ago and she barely made her way home and dropped into bed. So not getting up for anything less than the end of a world. 

The phone stops. 

The phone starts again.

The phone stops. 

The third time it starts, she rolls over and reaches for her discarded pants on the floor, digging through pockets one-handed until she finds the damn thing. Damn magical phone reception that works anywhere and everywhere. Andrew still hasn’t stopped cracking jokes about Intergalactic Roaming and Buffy _loathes_ being reachable all the time.

But when she presses the green button and brings it up to her ear, the first thing she hears if Xander’s, “Don’t hang up, we’ve got an early apocalypse.”

Damn it. 

+

The magical phone comes with a clever bit of technomancy, brought to you by the minds of Willow Rosenberg, Jane Foster and Tony Stark, that has Buffy on earth, sitting pretty, within half an hour of her old friend’s cry for help. 

She comes, she sees, she helps a bunch of mini’s pop their Armageddon cherry. It’s all fine and dandy and toward the end, the New Avengers even show up. They’ve been ‘new’ for a decade, but Buffy still calls them that. It seems wrong to just call them Avengers because even though Cap is still the boss of them, the roster has changed too much and really, when Tony and Clint retired in quick succession, it left no-one for Buffy to snark with. She’s still grumpy about that. 

They help with the clean-up and Buffy hugs Xander and spends a few hours catching up with him. His kids are striking out, Amy going for a doctorate, Jesse following in his father’s footsteps as a Council member. He’s proud enough to burst and segues neatly into an ode to Jeanie, his wife. At the end of which he looks sheepish and asks, “How’s your god?”

He still hasn’t gotten tired of that joke. 

Buffy shrugs. “Fine, I guess. Haven’t heard from him in a while.”

She’s pretty sure it’s March, by Earth standards, and he disappeared on a research binge shortly after Christmas with the Scoobies. 

Xander frowns, but says nothing, just offers, “Dawnie’s been asking if you’d been around.”

And so Buffy ends up whisking herself to Oxford, where her sister gets a kick out of terrorizing her students. Buffy sits in on the rest of her lecture, watches little Dawnie Summers wipe the floor with uppity kids who think they’re clever just because they’re in Oxford, and smiles broadly enough to have the kid next to her inch away. 

As soon as Dawn catches sight of her through the exodus of students at the end of the lecture, she squeals like a little girl and the sisters launch themselves at each other, bouncing and hugging and being as undignified as they can be while still fully clothed. 

“Buffy!” Dawn beams, “I haven’t seen you in months! Have dinner with me, catch up.”

Buffy laughs. “Why do you think I’m here?”

+

Loki sighs over yet another useless tome and wonders why Odin bothers to keep such drivel around in the first place. Half the information is outdated and the other half plain wrong. 

Alas, he tried Alfheim and Helheim first, and their libraries yielded even less information on the subject of his current obsession, leaving Loki little choice but to return to Asgard. It’s been nice, being around Mother more, but he could do without Odin and Thor and, honestly, everyone else on this rock. 

Summoned by Loki’s frustration, Thor, the giant oaf, suddenly pops up between the stacks, looking completely surprised at finding his brother here. He’s as bad an actor as he’s always been.

“Loki! Brother! How fortunate to meet you here! Dine with me!”

Loki could fight. But spending so much time on Midgard in the last decade has actually taught Thor a measure of patience, and he’d just wait him out. So he sighs, snaps his fingers to turn the offending book in front of him to ash, and then gracefully stands while Thor still gapes at the smoldering pile.

“That was a priceless book from Muspelheim.”

“That was utter trash,” Loki retorts, with a sneer, and starts leading the way to the kitchens. It’s too late for dinner in the Hall, thank the Norns. 

Thor gapes some more, then hurries to follow. 

“I met your beloved in Midgard today,” he offers when he catches up. His tone is leading.

“Is that so?” Loki mocks, gentler than he would have a few decades ago. “What was she doing?”

“Battling monsters, as she is wont to do. Her prowess in battle is unparalleled by any other Midgardian warriors, safe, perhaps the good Captain.”

Loki hums because, yes, quite. As if he would settle for anything less than the best at his side and at his back. 

“She told me to bid your hello, should I meet you.”

“Well then,” Loki allows, waits. Of course, Thor misses the joke, face going solemn as they reach their goal and the cook rouses from a stupor by the stove to bring out a cold meal for them. It’s too late for warm fare. 

“She seemed entirely uninterested in your whereabouts, Brother. And after the battle she retired with her old friend, Xander….”

Oh, save Loki from well-meaning relatives.

“She’s not having an affair, Brother, and if she were, that would hardly be your business, now would it?”

“If it hurt you,” the oaf starts and then quickly catches himself. In time to avoid following that book to a fiery grave. Loki has never needed his older brother’s protection, and certainly not in matters of the heart. 

Thor frowns mightily and spears a bit of cheese with a knife. “I worry,” he announces and chows down.

Loki rolls his eyes and reaches for the bread. 

+

They have two bottles of wine with an excellent steak dinner at Dawn’s favorite place in town, talking about everything that’s new until, inevitably, the conversation lands on Loki. Again.

“I haven’t seen him in a couple of months, but I’m sure he’s fine,” Buffy explains. She’d know if he wasn’t, anyway. It’s what magical amulets are for and hers and Loki’s match for a reason. 

Dawn purses her lips around a sip of wine. “Honestly, I don’t know how you do it. I go stir crazy without Brian around after a week away on a conference.”

Buffy shrugs. “We’re on a different time scale, though, aren’t we?”

After beating Odin’s trial, more square than fair, and getting a few pretty apples to munch down on, Buffy’s as immortal as her lover. What’s a few months when you’ve got a life expectancy of several millennia?

Besides, she’s so very over being attached to her SO at all hours of the day. Angel left her feeling like she couldn’t breathe without him, Riley made her dependent on him in ways that left her feeling crippled and Spike flat-out unhinged her with his presence as well as his absence. 

Loki comes and Loki goes. More importantly, Loki lets Buffy run and return at her own pace.

She loves that about him, too. 

Dawn shakes her head. “Still. You two are…,” she frowns, chews on her lipstick. “You’re like an arranged marriage, or something. You like each other just fine, but that’s just about it. There’s no passion, there.”

Passion. It must seem like that, after all the drama of Buffy’s love life, but really, “I live on a different planet, Dawn. How do you know how passionate we are or aren’t?”

A snort. “I don’t. But I know that, in order for any sort of passion to happen, you need to be on the _same planet_. Which you two aren’t, most of the time. I just want to make sure you’re happy, Buffy. You’re my sister, I love you, and I won’t always be here and I….”

“Yeah. I know.” She does. It’s just that it doesn’t matter how often she says she’s happy. No-one ever believes it. 

“Tell me about my nephews. Is Jimmy still driving the guys at NASA mad with stories of his space faring aunt?”

+

“You should bring Buffy by soon. We haven’t seen her since the new year,” Frigga announces as she kisses Loki goodbye on both cheeks. 

“If she has the time,” he allows, because he knows the women enjoy each other’s company. 

Frigga chuckles. “Always busy, your beloved. Well, invite her for me. And make sure you accompany her when she comes. I never see you both at once.”

Rolling his eyes, the god of chaos sighs “Not you, too, Mother.”

To her credit, the queen doesn’t play coy. “You have been wed barely two decades and already you act like a couple married for two hundred. I just worry. It’s my prerogative as your mother, so do not argue.”

“Just the once,” Loki allows. He will sic Buffy on his mother, a far more potent method. She, unlike him, can resist the queen’s gentle motherly oppression and Loki has never passed down a tactical advantage such as that. 

He steps out of Frigga’s embrace and waves goodbye before disappearing in a shimmer of green light. 

+

Their house is a small one, set apart from an equally small town. Odin has never visited it, but he scoffs whenever the house is mentioned, claiming it below the status of one of his sons. 

Loki delights, every time, in informing the Gallows God that he is not one of Odin’s sons and as such, the house will do just fine. 

Big places make Buffy uncomfortable. 

He teleports himself onto the little footpath leading up from town and finds a blonde head peeking out the kitchen window almost immediately. By the time he reaches the front door, it’s open, the slayer leaning against it, a small, private smile on her face.

“Look what the cat dragged in,” she remarks, grabs him by the collar and hauls him in for a kiss. 

Loki smiles into it, sets teeth into her lower lip and then swings her up into his arms and kicks the door shut behind them. He doesn’t need to look to find the way to the bedroom. Not anymore. 

There he dumps his beloved on the bed, startling a laugh out of her, and then sets to divesting them both of their clothes. 

Buffy lets him, giggling, offers, “Dawnie thinks we have no passion,” she remarks, between her shirt and undergarments.

“My brother thinks you’re having an affair.”

“Said affair thinks I’m stuck in a loveless relationship, even though he won’t say it.”

Loki pulls off her socks, one, then the other, and presses a kiss to the arch of each foot. “My mother might agree.”

Their gazes meet then, over an expanse of naked skin and already rumpled sheets and both of them roll their eyes, even while they’re smiling. After that, there is little talk.

+

“It’s annoying.” Buffy declares the next day over breakfast in the sun. “How everyone thinks they can butt it. Just because we’re not all over each other all the time, we’re obviously unhappy and have nothing in common.” She pouts. “All my family are mortal. We’ve been together for twenty years. You’d think they’d have accepted it by now.”

Loki sets down the apple he was methodically slicing up and tugs on a lock of blonde hair, marveling, not for the first time, at the idiocy of people. He stopped killing for this woman. Stopped the mayhem and turned back to the mischief of his early years, a time before he was so broken. She didn’t ask it of him, not once, but he did it, because he wants to be better for her. 

And she, she, who misses heaven everyday, underwent every single one of Odin’s pointless, artless trials to gain a lifespan to match his. So he wouldn’t be alone. She lets him pursue his science and magic, lets him roam when he needs to, lets him play tricks and be himself. 

And he lets her run off to save the world at a drop of a hat, lets her risk herself time and again, lets her shop too much and play terrible music and be silent and closed off when she needs to be. 

“Does it matter?” he asks, belatedly.

He returns to her, always, just as she returns to him. If the rest of the world is blind, then that’s no concern of theirs. 

Buffy hums thoughtfully, licks a bit of honey off one finger. 

“No,” she finally answers. I guess not.” 

She’s been drinking coffee, which leaves her tasting bitter and somehow burnt, but he kisses her anyway, just so he can complain afterwards. She laughs, flings a bit of apple peel at him and goes right back to drinking the disgusting concoction. 

+

**Author's Note:**

> And thus, this year's Buffy/Loki segment is concluded.
> 
>  
> 
> [Tumble with me.](wordsformurder.tumblr.com)


End file.
